Last week for science, we studied birds. Each day, my son picked two birds to study and then he made a color pencil drawing of each. There were a total of 10 drawings. Ian likes to draw and this was an assignment he liked doing.

We enjoy birds and birding and I chose to focus on birds last week to prepare for the Great Backyard Bird Count. The bird count is February 12-15, and we will do our bird count on Monday, February 15th.

Studying birds last week allowed me to remember the bird nest we found in our chimney last fall.

After we moved into our house back in the fall of 2009, we heard some birds in our chimney, but we didn’t think too much of it. We had many repairs to do around our house and one of them was to have a chimney cap installed. A chimney cap would keep birds and other critters out of our chimney. We called a company that specializes in pest and wildlife control to come and inspect our chimney and to expel the birds. What we learned was very interesting. He said the birds that had lived in our chimney were Chimney Swifts. They are protected in our area and had they still been there, we would not had been able to install the chimney cap until they had migrated. At that time, it was October and the birds had since migrated and so, the chimney cap could be installed. We were told the nest was very small, still intact and would not be a hazard when we decided to use the fireplace. The nest was attached to the chimney wall near the flue damper and my husband removed it while he was cleaning out other debris.

In the photo, I am holding the nest against the door casing to show how it attaches to the wall. It is one of the tiniest nests I have ever seen other than a hummingbird’s nest. You can see how this nest is made from tiny sticks. It is a very tight weave and there was a glue like substance that held it to the chimney wall. It is a very sturdy nest, as well.

It was an amazing find and we are glad the Chimney Swifts lived in our chimney so we could have this little jewel of nature.

The glue that holds Chimney Swift nests together is bird saliva. A similar glue from the nests of Asian swifts is the prime ingredient of birds nest soup. That’s a sort of soup that has not proved to be popular in the United States for some reason.